Xanthe Hunt

Xanthe Hunt is a journalist and writer with a special interest in mental health and health-related writing. She graduated from Stellenbosch University in early 2014, and has been travelling and freelancing since. Currently based in Cape Town, she is now interning for ELLE Magazine Online.

For many of us, a feisty cup of coffee is our go-to drink of choice when we’re feeling more bleh than buoyant. But for one German scientist, the miracle of caffeine seemed too limiting to be just a caffè latte or espresso. Dr. Adolf Klenk is putting caffeine in shampoo.

You intend to buy a salad. You look at the menu: there’s a whole salad section. Your brain starts playing tricks, and instead of going green and nibbling on a tasty salad niçoise, you find your eye drawn to the people next to you, and Mrs Table No 5’s burger.

It may not make for the most romantic after-dinner kisses, but new research has found that adding garlic to your meals could protect your brain from the effects of aging. Scientists from the University of Missouri have isolated a nutrient in this delicious little bulb, which protects the human brain

For many people with an anxious temperament, the tendency to feel overwhelmed, or even full-blown anxiety or depression, options for relieving this psychological distress is usually limited: take medication or seek psychotherapy. But a growing field of study is suggesting that “alternative” treatments, including yoga, might be benefit to managing

Anyone with a dog (or a child or partner for that matter), has probably learnt the value of good old operant conditioning: Reward desired behavior and it increases. Punish undesirable behavior and it decreases. But there seems to be a lot more to this rewards-based system of behavior change pioneered

Sex is a body thing. Good sex is a mind thing. And, as with many matters of the mind, getting your groove on – in a fulfilling, meaningful manner – can take a little work and a lot of thought. However, most articles and authorities on the subject seem to

What if I told you that there were five steps you could take to better your mental state? Your mental well being has an impact on all spheres of life. Scientific evidence does indeed point to five steps that every one of us can take to improve our mental well

Too much work, not enough money, and all round stress. When we’re feeling unreasonably tense, we are all familiar with the usual culprits. But what if they are not the only issues to blame? What if there were simple, silly, smaller things which were pushing your baseline anxiety through the

While many of us have dreamed of the day when our favourite starchy staple had half the calories, few would have reckoned it was actually possible. Scientists from Sri Lanka, though, seemed to have done exactly this: they’ve found a way to halve the calories in rice. Counter intuitively, the

By Xanthe Hunt We’ve all been there: we’re feeling blue, it’s a Sunday afternoon, and the weather isn’t great. What’s more, we’ve got a stressful week lying ahead. We reach for the remote, and, 7 episodes of The Goodwife later, its 10pm and we’ve eaten 2 bags of popcorn and